Thursday, April 11, 2019

Anatomy of an Anthology-7

The covert art (by Maurizio Manzieri) has been selected! Now on to the next task.
The stories need to be arranged in some type of order. Lots of thought involved here. I’m still thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Back in the past, when the anthologies Infinivox published were solely audiobooks, I made a conscious effort to try to alternate stories between male and female narrations. I still tend to do this. I also try not to bunch several stories together with the same settings, themes or tones. Also, special consideration needs to be given to the selection of first and last stories of the collection. The first and last stories in an anthology are the “bookends” of the collection. I believe that these two stories should be the most memorable in the book and leave a lasting impression on the reader. Ideally, after reading the first story, readers will be glad that they picked up the anthology and after reading the last story they will be anxious for next year’s volume. This, of course, is tough to do as not all readers will agree on the most memorable stories in a collection. It’s all the more challenging, and fun, to do this when an anthology, such as The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories, has so many strong stories.

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Anatomy of an Anthology-6

I’m excited to announce the table of contents for The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories:

·     “Cold Blue Sky” by J E Bates
·     “Okay, Glory” by Elizabeth Bear
·     “Air Gap” by Eric Cline
·     “When We Were Starless” by Simone Heller
·     “Grace’s Family” by James Patrick Kelly
·     “Meat and Salt and Sparks” by Rich Larson
·     “Quality Time” by Ken Liu
·     “The Blue Fairy’s Manifesto” by Annalee Newitz
·     “Different Seas” by Alastair Reynolds
·     “S’elfie” by Justina Robson
·     “Hard Mary” by Sofia Samatar
·     “The Buried Giant” by Lavie Tidhar